Privacy

I finally started using Molly to send and receive messages via Signal. Molly is a hardened fork of Signal for Android, offering features such as an encrypted message database, automatic locking, shredding no longer needed secrets from RAM, notifications via UnifiedPush, and Tor / SOCKS proxy support. This is by no means an alternative to Signal itself, but rather an alternative (and hardened) Android client for Signal. While these extra security features are great, my main motivation to use Molly was battery saving, actually. I’m on GrapheneOS, which does offer sandboxed Google Play (opt-in), yet I’ve chosen not to use it. This means I’m not using Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for notifications either, which Signal by default heavily relies on. However, it continues to make me very glad I can still use a secure and open source mobile operating system (GrapheneOS) in 2025, without needing to rely on proprietary and privacy-impairing functionality. ...

Troubling times ahead: Chat Control 2.0 is coming up, a law that would force all EU citizens to surrender their private messages, effectively breaking end-to-end encryption for everyone. I’m sad to see this issue is back on the table again (after previous failed attempts), and even more saddened by the severe lack of critical thinking and media coverage around this topic. Just in case you missed it, here’s a brief explainer, courtesy of stopscanningme.eu: ...

This post briefly describes how to configure an OpenWrt router to function as a WireGuard VPN server. This enables me to have my phone always be securely connected to my home router, from wherever I am. This is what it roughly looks like: First, install the necessary WireGuard kernel module: root # opkg update root # opkg install kmod-wiregard Generate a new private and public key pair for the server, and your first peer (e.g. your phone), and a pre-shared key for added post-quantum secrecy: ...